WVUE to celebrate its 60th anniversary with Sunday documentary special

WVUE will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its Nov. 1, 1953 sign-on with an hour-long special at 4 p.m. Sunday (Nov. 2). Nancy Parker, reporter for the piece, said helping assemble it has been a lesson in changing technology and changing attitudes about race and gender on the airwaves.

Some of the special’s footage comes from cans of film stored at the University of New Orleans, brought back to life in the digital era by photographer-editor Kia Callia.

“He projected the film on a blank wall and recorded it that way,” she said. “In the meantime, he had to hold his finger inside the machine because the film was so crumbly and old, and in many cases you couldn’t hear the sound without holding the film down with your finger. That’s kind of what we were working with to get these few precious images of these people from the past.”

One of whom looms especially large in the station’s history: Alec Gifford.

Five decades a presence in New Orleans TV news – minus one year working for NBC News in New York in the mid-1960s – Gifford died earlier this year at age 85. His 13-year tenure as news director, anchor and reporter at WVUE began upon his return to New Orleans from his network sojourn.

“He was such a pioneer,” Parker said. “He hired so many people who moved on and have done well. (WVUE) was a training ground like you wouldn’t believe.”

One of Gifford’s hires plays a key role in the anniversary-celebration special. Furnell Chatman’s story, Parker said, was “just baffling to me because of the time I’m in right now.”

Chatman was a Xavier University graduate whom Gifford hired as WVUE’s first black reporter, though viewers wouldn’t know it for months, because Chatman at first reported stories without appearing on camera.

“It was a way for Alec to show people, without showing them, that this was a competent, smart, dedicated, aggressive reporter without ever seeing skin color,” Parker said. “Once you get attached to that brilliance, ‘Ta-da!’

“Every day, he’d say, ‘Is this my day?’ And they would always say, ‘Not today.’ Finally, it was the day.”

Chatman went on to a distinguished career at Los Angeles’ NBC affiliate, retiring in 2009 to return to his hometown.

“He’s not in news anymore,” Parker said of the retired journalist. “He’s a handyman around the house and a grandpa three times over.”

Revisiting his early experience at WVUE was emotional for Chatman, Parker said.

“It's still painful to this day,” Parker said. “He said, ‘When I see people like you on the air, or Norman Robinson, or other African-Americans, it lets me know this wasn’t all in vain.’ He was the first. It always takes a first.”

Buddy Diliberto, still first in the hearts of many local sports fans, is one of many other names and faces to be recalled in the special, Parker said.

“I think a lot of people will look at the TV screen and say, ‘Oh, I remember her, I remember him,’ like seeing old friends,” Parker said.

Air-talent for a long time was all-male, of course.

“They were all guys for a while, and that was kind of a surprise, but back in those days, they said, Alec didn't really think reporting was girls’ work because it was so dangerous,” Parker said. “That's what Richard Angelico (another Gifford hire) told me, and I'm like, ‘Seriously?’ He said, ‘Yeah.’”

Revisiting WVUE’s coverage of major news events through its six decades will spark similar memories, not all of them so fond. Hurricane Katrina levee-failure floodwaters swamped the station and knocked its signal off the air for two weeks. Reporting in the city continued, however, and newscasts were anchored from an Alabama station for almost three months.

“That’s included in the documentary as well,” Parker said. “You can see the tape archive floating on 3 or 4 feet of water.”